Global Warming and Ethics

Global Warming: Why it is not the greatest fear of the industrializing world, why it is such a great fear for the industrialized world

There is a threat that currently looms upon the horizon, in danger of choking the fragile health of the developing economies of the so-called Third World. This threat is not the so-called global warming phenomena. The long ranging environmental results of the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere still remains unknown, and the data is far from conclusive. What is known by international economists is that the threat of global warming, as deployed as a kind of buzz word and media scare tactic of the environmentalist movement could impede the growth of industrialized nations and reduce the chance of Third World countries improving their living standards.

Despite the words 'Trade not Aid,' as bandied about by corporations such as the Body Shop, there is little likelihood that the importing of natural and native goods from indigenous societies will sustain developing economies on a long-term basis, in the same way that investment from private businesses for profit shall. Industrialization and technical expansion to support such businesses is necessary. Even if global warming is unquestioned, the right of a local government to dispose of its economy in a fashion to sustain its current populace cannot be circumvented in the name of the global community, or vague notions of an international nation-state that exists beyond the reach of private industry and property.

In response to attempts of the developing world to industrialize, environmental groups have stressed the beauty of the untouched resources of the undeveloped or underdeveloped world. Such an image is familiar, of course. One pictures the beautiful rainforest, pristine and untouched. Curiously, in such lovely advertisements for things to 'stay as they are,' however, something is lacking -- the indigenous people themselves. One sees few images, except in passing, of the hearts and minds of the individuals who cry out for adequate employment, education, and wages to sustain their livelihoods and lives. To seek the fullest extent of their own happiness, rather than the happiness of the world environment, they cry out to their government for adequate sanitation, access to a diversity of goods to sustain their bodies and to protect them from the elements, and to simply lead fuller and richer lives, as they have seen pictured on the world media. Even if one questions the desirability of the lifestyle promoted by the first world through industrialization, the first world of the West has no inherent right to deny the developing world the benefits it has already reaped through the use of industrial resources and technology.

If world authorities do not intervene, it is implied by the propaganda of the environmentalists, the world as a whole will suffer in the long-term. But the rights of the future generations do not cancel out the first. True, many scientists argue that global warming and significant atmospheric changes may already be occurring and two major industries, electric power generation and the automotive industry account for a large portion of use of fossil fuel use worldwide. The industrial world, however, has already reaped and benefited economically and technologically from the usage of such industrial developments. The developing world has suffered economic abuses as a result, as it breathes the same air as the first and uses the same oceans.

Thus the developing world has suffered all of the negative consequences of industrialism. It thereby has a right to make use of the positives of industrialization, even if this injures the globe further in the short-term future from a first world perspective. It is colonialist for the first world to demand the developing world limit itself, to benefit all of humanity, after using the currently developing territories as sources of natural resource as well as industrial enrichment.

It is true that first world companies have made use of poor and unfair labor practices in the developing world that take advantage of locally low labor costs but do not generate new industries for private local companies and entrepreneurs. But the developing world desires to expand its economies and sources of local development to reap the same gains from industrialization as the first world, so it does not always exist as a reaching, wanting hand, begging assistance of the first world. Developing economies have suffered economic damage from industrialization already, but not benefited from industrialization's promise. Thus the first world has no right, now that it is comfortable in its economic and technical status enough to turn its concerns to the environment, to demand that the developing world limit its own local growth and industrial development for the benefit of the world that made industrialization a priority and a global benchmark of the advancement of civilization in the first place.

"Think of the next generation,' cry out many environmentalist watch groups like Green peace. But one cannot think of the next generation until one has satisfied the needs of the current generation. Private businesses of the developing worlds can do this, provided they are not hindered in their development. Every individual and every society has the right to achieve their own personal happiness and seek the maximum utilization of the goods they possess in pursuit of that happiness, according to rights based theories of justice that predominate in international law.